Well, well. As a well-traveled black male, I’ve know the US environment, no the global environment, to have prejudice and bias. Not life threating hatred, but some. I believe, all humans utilize biases–The human brain works quite efficiently with biases (a topic worthy of a blog post by itself).

My key learning from the article is that sufficient racial integration has not occurred such that a broad base of Americans, see, Americans with racial differences as one of them. If the article would have reported on the racial prejudice of Black people, I suspect there would be no progress. My life experience certainly echoes the percentages quoted in the article.

As I reflect on the article, I remember the discussion Barack Obama made after the wide display of the Rev. Wright sermons. One telling point he made, “America has not integrated its churches.” Maybe that is the true evidence of integration, religious worship. The American society has focused integration efforts on schools, employment, housing and with the Affordable Care Act, health care. Maybe, just maybe, its time to effectively integrate religious worship. Now, that is a challenge.

When I first read The Only Way to Become Amazingly Great at Something, I thought of my own post How to Learn–It’s Not Studying. The posts rely on the similar notion that practice and effort cause results. Results achieved without effort are discovered, at least eventually I hope, when reputation and expectation must deliver in a new situation. A lesson, sadly I feel, lost on too many of today’s youth as they strike out to pursue their dreams.

I have three family members who are of the age, where making a college choice is a stressful experience. As I have witnessed each child’s experience, I remember my experiences choosing a college. As life has played out, I have had this experience twice—once for undergraduate studies and another for graduate studies. I have conveyed to them my thoughts and experiences but when I was sent an article debating historically black colleges (HBCUs) and ivy league institutions, I felt compelled to put my thoughts down Read more

Science is gaining greater consensus that perseverance and focus are the keys to success. Hurray! After years of biased researchers claiming intelligence as the key to success, the tide appears to be turning. Read more

Several theories of student self-entitlement are offered in Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes – NYTimes.com. But entitlement, as a notion of human behavior, has existed much longer than the lifetimes of today’s students. No doubt today’s students exhibit a strong belief about what they deserve. They have had success defined by measured accomplishments-test scores and grades-during their lifetime. Thus, entitlement is not driven by family pressure, or a test taking preparation gone awry, but Read more

Supporting minimum standards set at a a national level is easy, but national standards (Randi Weingarten – The Case for National Education Standards) that in effect direct and prioritize local dollars borders on ridiculous. As local economies must absorb the newly educated, it is the local environment that must set standards. The challenge is identifying when minimum standards are no longer minimum. Read more

How are our elected leaders doing? Too early to tell. The economic environment’s complexity will take time to convey the results. But in looking for the answers, my evaluation criteria are becoming clearer. Good stimulus activity has a futuristic effect. Taxable profits can be generated into the future when capital is employed in productive ways. However, poorly employed capital allows waste and inefficiency to persist. Telling the two situations apart requires a macroeconomic spending refresher. Read more

1) With the ability to have videos, and personalized feedback through the Internet, why use a physical building, at all, to educate?
2) Should a measure of success be the percent of students who are college ready or attending college?

Investment Information

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Software

CSS Style
Welcome to the Complete CSS Guide, a reference to every aspect of cascading style sheets. If you need help learning CSS or if you’re looking for info about selectors, properties and all the other aspects of cascading style sheets, this is the place.

Curio
Hands down the best software to help you think, achieve goals, and do what ever life sets in front of you.

Julia Language
A high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments.

Julia Packages
Searchable listing of all registered packages for the Julia programming language.

R Statistical Language
R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, which provides a wide variety of statistical analysis, linear and nonlinear modeling tools, time-series analysis, and visualization tools. Among other things.

Sourceforge – Open Software
An Open Source community resource dedicated to helping open source projects be as successful as possible. A premiere resource for open source software development and distribution.